Donald Trump Unveils List of His Top Picks for Supreme Court

May 18, 2016 |

By JILL COLVIN and MARK SHERMAN | May. 18, 2016 – Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, released Wednesday a list of 11 potential Supreme Court justices he plans to vet to fill the seat of late Justice Antonin Scalia if he’s elected to the White House.

The list of conservative federal and state judges includes Steven Colloton of Iowa, Allison Eid of Colorado and Raymond Gruender of Missouri.

Also on the list are: Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, Joan Larsen of Michigan, Thomas Lee of Utah, William Pryor of Alabama, David Stras of Minnesota, Diane Sykes of Wisconsin and Don Willett of Texas. Trump had previously named Pryor and Sykes as examples of kind of justices he would choose.

The news comes as Trump is working to bring together a fractured Republican Party and earn the trust of still-skeptical establishment Republicans who question his electability in the general election, as well as conservatives in his party still wary of his commitment to their cause.

In a statement, Trump said the list “is representative of the kind of constitutional principles I value” and said that, as president, he would use it “as a guide to nominate our next United States Supreme Court Justices.”

His campaign stressed the list was compiled “first and foremost, based on constitutional principles, with input from highly respected conservatives and Republican Party leadership.”

Larsen, who serves on the Michigan Supreme Court and is a former law clerk to Scalia, delivered one of the tributes to the late justice at his memorial service in March. She served in the Justice Department office that produced the legal justifications for the enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that critics have called torture.

Willett, a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, is perhaps best known for his heavy use of social media. His Twitter handle, @justicewillett, has more than 35,000 followers.

Pryor was initially given a recess appointment to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush. Senate Democrats had tried to block Pryor’s appointments over his strong criticism of the Roe v. Wade decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion.

Apart from Sykes, who is 58, the others all are younger than 55 and David Stras is just 41. The eight men and three women on the list are all white.

Trump’s list is also notable for the names that don’t appear. It omits two of the biggest stars in the conservative legal world, Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the federal appeals court in Washington, and former Bush administration Solicitor General Paul Clement.

Trump first said in March that he planned to release the list of five to 10 judges in an effort to ease concerns about his conservative credentials, which had come under attack in the heated Republican primary.

“I am going to give a list of either five or 10 judges that I will pick, 100 percent pick, that I will put in for nomination. Because some of the people that are against me say: ‘We don’t know if he’s going to pick the right judge. Supposing he picks a liberal judge or supposing he picks a pro-choice judge,'” Trump said at an event in Palm Beach, Florida.

He said then the list would include judges “that everybody respects, likes and totally admires” — “great conservative judges, great intellects, the people that you want.”

The vow marked a rare moment of acknowledgment by Trump that he could be doing more to appease those in his party opposed his candidacy.

Trump had said he would like to appoint judges in the mold of deeply conservative as Scalia, who died in February.

In the statement, he described Scalia as “a remarkable person and a brilliant Supreme Court Justice.”

“His career was defined by his reverence for the Constitution and his legacy of protecting Americans’ most cherished freedoms,” he added. “He was a justice who did not believe in legislating from the bench and he is a person whom I held in the highest regard and will always greatly respect his intelligence and conviction to uphold the Constitution of our country.”